As A Mafia Boss, I Refuse To Be An Extra-Chapter 98: Beautiful Night III

The process was neither quick nor clean.

By the time he finished, five pairs of eyes joined the collection, carefully extracted and placed beside their corresponding hands.

"Poetic, really. You used these eyes to watch her suffer... To coordinate your attack, to enjoy her fear and now... they’re gone. Seems fair."

The final act was almost merciful by comparison.

Five clean strikes with his axe.

Five heads separated from their bodies with surgical precision.

Damian arranged them in a neat row facing each other, like they were still having a conversation.

"There. Now you can spend eternity looking at what you became."

Blood pooled across the alley floor, thick and dark in the moonlight.

Kuro descended from his perch and began absorbing the death energy saturating the space, his red eyes glowing brighter and brighter until they looked like small suns.

The raven grew slightly larger, more solid, feeding on the violence and terror that had just been unleashed.

Damian carefully collected the five masks, each containing a severed hand.

"Come on, Kuro. We have a delivery to make."

They disappeared into the darkness, leaving behind a scene that would be discovered hours later and cause nightmares for the investigative team who found it.

****

Seraphina opened the door before Damian even knocked.

She’d been standing near it, waiting... her expression was carefully controlled.

Ariana was sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, her healing mostly complete, her eyes red from crying.

When she saw Damian’s face – that same quiet emptiness – and the blood covering his hands and clothes, she understood immediately what had happened.

"Here."

Damian set five objects down on the table in front of her with a soft, almost gentle motion.

Five masks, each containing something that had once been attached to a human being. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Her face went pale as paper when she saw what was inside them.

Her hands came up to her mouth.

"I found them." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "They won’t be touching anyone ever again. Not with these hands... Not with anything at all."

For a long moment, Ariana just stared at what was on the table.

The hands that had held her down, had torn at her clothes, had tried to destroy her....

Now severed, powerless and lying in front of her...

Then the tears came again, but these were different from before.

Not helplessness or terror this time...

But with relief so profound it hurt. Gratitude so deep it had no adequate words. And Vindication that she’d survived and they hadn’t.

"Thank you." Her voice was barely a whisper, cracked and small. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

She repeated it like a prayer, her whole body shaking.

"Don’t thank me."

Damian sat in the chair across from her, his expression finally showing something human behind the emptiness.

"Sleep well tonight knowing you’re safe. They’re gone and it’s finished. They’ll never hurt you or anyone else again."

Ariana nodded slowly, unable to take her eyes off the table.

After a moment, she reached out with trembling fingers and touched one of the masks, as if confirming it was real.

Then she pulled her hand back and buried her face in the blanket, sobbing with a mixture of trauma and relief that would take months to fully process.

Seraphina watched this exchange from across the room, her arms crossed and her expression impossible to read.

She had years of military service and countless battlefield experiences. She had seen more violence and death than most people could imagine in their worst nightmares.

She’d killed Monsters that ate humans. She’d executed war criminals. She’d done things in the name of the Federation that would have gotten her court-martialed if anyone knew the full details.

And yet... she was genuinely unsettled by what she’d just witnessed.

Not the violence itself. She’d seen far worse and done far worse on actual battlefields against actual Monsters.

No, it was something else entirely that chilled her to the core.

It was the fact that this was a fifteen-year-old student.

A child who should have been worrying about exams and rankings and making friends and maybe his first crush.

Instead he’d walked out into the night, hunted five people through a city, systematically tortured and dismembered them, and returned carrying trophies of his work.

With the same expression someone might have after returning from a routine errand.

’What in the hell kind of childhood did this kid have?

What kind of experiences shape a fifteen-year-old into something like this?

But there was nothing in his file that showed anything like that...

I think I’m starting to understand why SFD is so unsettled by this kid.’

She’d seen hardened military veterans break down after having to do even a fraction of what Damian had just done. Soldiers who required months of psychological counseling and still never fully recovered.

And here he was, sitting quietly across from Ariana, his voice gentle and reassuring, his manner calm and collected and his eyes just slightly tired.

Like two completely different people existed inside the same body.

The gentle protector who’d carried an injured girl and held her while she cried and offered comfort.

And the absolute monster who’d disappeared into the night and returned with evidence of methodical torture and execution.

’I’ve seen generals who weren’t this terrifying. Real generals... Combat veterans who’ve killed hundreds of Monsters and enemy combatants in warfare.

And they never looked like this kid looks when he’s decided someone needs to die.

He’s fifteen years old.

He’s probably going to be the most dangerous person in the entire Federation.

And somehow, impossibly, terrifyingly, he’s one of my students.’

Seraphina uncrossed her arms and sighed deeply, walking to her kitchen to make tea because she desperately needed something to do with her hands.

"Stay here tonight, both of you."

Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

"I have spare rooms. Ariana shouldn’t be alone. And you–"

She glanced at Damian over her shoulder, seeing the blood still covering him.

"You need to clean up and sleep before whatever is in your head right now drives you to do something else tonight."

Damian looked at her for a moment, then nodded.

"Thank you, Professor Seraphina. For everything, for taking care of her and... for not asking questions you don’t want answered."

"I’m not thanking you for what you did tonight."

Her voice was firm.

"But I’m also not going to pretend that those men didn’t deserve what happened to them. The world is better without them in it."

She turned back to her tea preparation.

"Now get cleaned up. There’s a shower down the hall. I’ll burn those clothes."

Outside, the stars continued their slow journey across the sky, completely indifferent to everything that had occurred beneath them.

The night was still beautiful and peaceful.

Still perfectly and terrifyingly calm.

And somewhere in a forgotten alley, five heads stared at each other in eternal conversation, their sightless eyes reflecting the moonlight.